Modern Glass Technology


Glass technology is exciting more than ever in the direction that it is moving right now! The new and improved qualities architectural glass is having is all in the interlayer. The interlayer is a lamination process that occurs between plates of annealed glass that gives positive qualities. These positive qualities provide safety, security, sound reduction, solar energy control, UV control, protection from natural disaster, durability, and all with low visual distortion.


The new and improved characteristics are speciality qualities that are applied to the interlayer in addition to the qualities listed above. These specialities are broken down into the following lighting, opacity, hardware and energy.


Lighting:
LED technology has moved fast in the past few years and is now capable of being embedded into the interlayer. These LED points of light now may be a seeming old technology to OLED Organic Light-Emitting Diode technology a partially opaque material that provides high quality HD video images.



Opacity:
The technology has been coined "switch glass" that has the ability to turn glass from transparent to translucent when electricity is applied. There is several variations of this type of glass the best being the ability to adjust the opacity of the glass to exact levels by applying energy.


Hardware:
Point load glass technology has reduced hardware structural components to small parts but now hardware is beginning to be embedded into the glass held into place by the interlayer during the lamination process. The best example of this process i've found is the components used for the apple store glass stair treads.


Energy:
Organic photovoltaic cells are now being installed in the interlayer that not only provide energy but also provide a tint to the window. This new use is exciting to think about all of the large glass buildings that could use this technology to power the buildings during the peak energy usage time (daytime).



Related Articles:




Website information and photo references :
http://theglassblog.wordpress.com/2011/01/19/laminated-glass-basics/#comment-70
http://www.aisglass.com/pvb_laminated.asp
http://www.konarka.com/
http://www.ifoapplestore.com/stores/glass_staircase.html

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